Back from California
The weather was quite agreeable, but dry. Because I'm hypersensitive, I went around with smarting hands due to the lack of Birmingham-strength humidity. Sunny and breezy, though. Apparently they average 3 inches a year, according to an old elementary school friend of Dad's that we met up with. They've been keeping in touch, and since my Dad went to Harvard, my Mom to a college in Boston, and Jim (the friend) to MIT, they've been pretty inseparable. We visited their apartment and asked directions from non-English speakers (obviously we didn't get them) and ended up being witness to an infestation of rabbits driven out of their habitats by developers... afterwards, we went to a dimly lit pizza place with a white noise background of the sonorous, metallic humming of heaters and were served by a college girl with a plaster face. As the pizzas came and the light left, Jim and my parents began to tell me old stories and remind themselves of college exploits with partial sentences. Apparently their car broke down on the way back from a kentucky Thanksgiving in the middle of the dirtiest, most disreputable part of Boston and my Dad walked around the car swinging large wrenches threateningly as jim the MIT kid struggled with the car. Somehow I imagine the old pictures from their "college days" of the thick, black horn-rimmed glasses, white sweaters, and soft faces and don't imagine a wrench could make such a Harvard or MIT kid look very threatening.